


Inland See

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Coming Out, Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A home, they say, is where the people you care about are, where you feel loved. What about when you aren't likely to be welcomed by the people you care about?





	Inland See

He hasn't seen his mother in years.

No-she hasn't seen ...his mother. That doesn't work, but applying the other pronoun feels hazardous. For certain Tobias wouldn't've cared for it. Although he might just have come up with something about how it would be just like a girl to take after his witch-bitch of a wife. 

Eileen had left and gone home--that is, to her ancestral, childhood home, leaving her half-blood child with no certainty that her mother would even be accepted back rather than thrown out on the streets. It was even more doubtful that a person by the name of Snape (or any other Muggle name, really) had any place within the Prince home, fond childhood nicknames not withstanding. 

And yet now the young Snape, with that hated name bearing down on skinny shoulders, is seeking admittance to that ancestral home, to tell her something that in all likelihood she doesn't want to hear.

* * *

The door doesn't open with the first knock or the first three in quick succession. Then Eileen herself comes, looking pale and distracted. "Hello"s are briefly exchanged.

She doesn't walk in easily--can't seem to tame her limbs properly, tromping into this place representing half the things she's never had. 

"Was there a reason for your visit?" Mum remarks absently, tracing her fingers along her own hands.

"...I'm not a man." Severus Snape announces, curt and bold and uncertain, the sort of pronouncement you make as a teenager with conviction but wariness.

Eileen doesn't speak. And doesn't speak, stares out the window at the lawn. Sev can't see a clock and begins counting, counts off four minutes, four sixties.

"Are you shunning me?" she demands at the end of _fifty nine ---_ for the fourth time.

"No," Eileen says hoarsely. "I don't know what to say. I don't know what you mean."

"I mean I don't want you to think of me as your son" she blurts with blithe tongue.

There is another pause, but not a full minute, and somehow it seems fuller with thinking.

"Daughter, then?" Eileen asks softly.

"I--there's no other option, is there?"

A frown of concern passes onto Eileen's face like clouds rushing across the sky. "I...I don't know what to tell you. I wish I could say we as a people were better about this business, but even though we surely could do...things, there are enough people who want to adhere to traditions their grandfathers began a hundred years ago--" what she leaves unsaid is probably "that we don't have transitions."

Eileen sighs "But I'm not sure you chose right if you chose me to emulate."

That is...awkward, impossible to reply to in this moment.

"No--don't mind that. It's fine." Eileen says forcefully, as though it isn't entirely.

There is another taut silence.

"You in love with the Evens girl?" Mum forces a casual tone into her voice, as she used to do when trying to hide what was happening in the shadowed, cramped Snape house.

"I--I don't think so." It's evidently Sev's turn to stare off into the foreground. "At least, it's not that I want to marry her, it's just I want her to myself, or at least I don't want Potter, that toerag, of all people to have to take her away from me. Maybe I wouldn't mind if she was dating someone decent, and if he didn't...if he didn't mind me." More than she'd meant to blurt out.

"They say there's a conflict brewing. I'm sure the Potters are on Dumbledore's side." Her tone is ever so slightly disapproving.

"I'm sure they are," Sev agrees disdainfully.

"I don't know, Sev--I was born into a world where, as far as men were concerned, whatever they suspected, atoms stayed their own kind. You were born after they unleashed that dreadful alchemy in time of war. That's not so different from what wizards have aspired to do since time immemorial, what Dumbledore worked on, more or less.

"But I'm not sure the wizarding world is going to be able, practically, to cling to its isolation, to its prized superiority. They do the next thing to magic in their labs, painstakingly. They wield more energy than any one of us could channel."

The soliloquy trails off there and leaves Sev more than a bit baffled and blindsided.

"I don't think--I don't think I could stand it to be wholly in the Muggle world. At least not now."

"No, no I don't suppose you would. I have no good answers for why I tolerated your father. And aside from that, the wizards have a way of assuring that their own effectively can't up and leave."

"I--I heard whispers about it, and I guess there are a couple of Hufflepuffs who... who aren't the sex they were born as." It has little pertinence to Eileen's reply, but it's the closest to an explanation Sev feels ready to give.

"You know--it's not often gold they change things into. And there are rarer and dearer metals. Sev--child, I may not know how to respond properly. I can't say I really know how you feel. But I never liked to be thought of as 'princess'. You don't have to be what everyone wants." It seems about as close to a declaration of acceptance as she would give right now.

"Can I--do I still call you Sev?" Which is complicated. But...

"For now. I--I probably should leave. Before the Princes return."

Eileen sighs. "I-- they don't hate you, the way you may think. But... yes, perhaps it's not the time you were introduced today, given the wounds in the family, given that...my father grew up in the world of those grandfathers and I think he may...not know how to react at first, to this news. But Sev--I do think he'll come round, I'm fairly sure of it."

**Author's Note:**

> ...I'm ?? agender? nonbinary? something like that. But...I've not come out to any of my family.
> 
> The title has little meaning or relevance to the story; it is influenced by the Vienna Teng album Inland Territory, but See is to some extent meant in the German sense of lake/sea.


End file.
